White House, faith groups fight religious discrimination

The Obama administration announced a new initiative to fight religious discrimination at a White House convening Dec. 17 about upholding America’s tradition of religious pluralism.

Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, said in coming months her office will partner with other federal agencies to host a series of community roundtables and discussions in a new administration-wide, community engagement initiative to ensure the nation’s promise of religious freedom for all.

“Combating discrimination based on one’s religion remains fundamental not only to protecting our values but also to defending our freedom,” said Gupta, an assistant attorney general who previously worked for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We cannot — and we must not — allow our enemies to define how we live or to dictate how we treat one another.”

“Let’s be very clear: There are no second-class faiths in the United States of America,” Melissa Rogers, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, told the gathering.

“If we’re honest, we will admit that we have not always lived up to our ideals,” said Rogers, an attorney who previously worked at the Baptist Joint Committee. “Our history is pock-marked by periods when the majority has chosen exclusion of people such as Catholics or Jews, for example. So we’ve chosen exclusion sometimes over pluralism.”

“There’s growing concern today that we could be entering into another such period, telling certain people that simply because of their faith they cannot be part of our pluralism,” Rogers said. “Nothing could be more un-American. Nothing could strike more fundamentally at our founding principles.”

Baptist leaders attending the White House event included (left to right): Roy Medley of American Baptist Churches USA, Walker, Curtis Ramsey-Lucas of American Baptist Home Mission Societies, and Suzii Paynter of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The White House event included a panel with representatives from groups supporting Know Your Neighbor, an initiative by 15 diverse organizations — including the Baptist Joint Committee — to promote understanding and respect between Americans of different faiths and those who have no faith at all. (See page 2 for details on the program.)

BJC Executive Director Brent Walker participated in a panel discussion during the White House convening, alongside other members of the Know Your Neighbor coalition representing humanist, Sikh, Muslim and Jewish viewpoints. He told the crowd that, while his work often involves ensuring government remains neutral toward religion, it’s also important to “pay attention to that horizontal relationship” of getting to know our neighbors.

“It’s not just that vertical relationship between church and state, but also horizontally and culturally and interpersonally how we relate to one another,” Walker explained. Both, he said, are “essential components to preserving our plush religious pluralism in this country and the freedoms that we all enjoy.”

Robert Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, briefed the audience on demographics fueling tensions driven by religious pluralism.

“At no time in our nation’s history have we really experienced this level of diversity, and the most dramatic of these changes have occurred across the generations that are currently alive today,” Jones said. “That’s a lot of change in a short amount of time. To be sure, these changes will present some challenges, and at our worst I think we are seeing that they may ignite fear or even violence.”

At the same time, Jones said, today’s generation faces a new opportunity “to engage in the ongoing work of living out the words on the Great Seal of the United States: E pluribus unum, out of the many, one.”

BJC Quick Links

Follow Us

Get BJC email updates

BJC RSS Feeds

About the BJC

The Baptist Joint Committee's mission is to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for all, furthering the Baptist heritage that champions the principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor inhibited by government.

Did You Know?

Founded in 1936, the BJC is the only faith-based agency devoted solely to religious liberty and the separation of church and state. Supported by 15 Baptist bodies, the BJC protects the free exercise of religion and defends against its establishment by government.

Working With Others

A proven bridge-builder, the BJC works with a wide range of religious and nonreligious groups in education and advocacy efforts. Since colonial times, Baptists have worked in alliance with other believers and nonbelievers alike when we find common cause.